Freedom Day

Today is Freedom Day in South Africa. It marks the day in 1994 of the first post-Apartheid  elections, allowing all citizens to vote for the first time in South Africa's history. Nelson Mandela would become the country's first black president and a time of justice and healing would begin for a country that had been torn apart by so much bigotry, racism and hatred.

Many images that I have seen over the past few months come to mind as I reflect on this day and what it means to the people around me. Most specifically images from the Apartheid Museum in Jo'Burg dance across my thoughts. Our training group was the first to have the opportunity to visit the museum, and it was definitely one of the highlights for me. If anything I wish we could have had more time to spend there.

I was twelve-years-old when Nelson Mandela cast his first vote in a South African election, when he led his country out of Apartheid. I don't remember knowing anything about it at the time. It would be a few years later that I would read Alan Patton's Cry, The Beloved Country for the first time, but it was without context and understanding. And although my general knowledge of what Apartheid was has grown since that time, it was not until the past few months that I have truly come to any real understanding of the word and what it was and still is for South Africa.

On Wednesday of last week, South Africa held parliamentary elections again. The majority went to the ANC (African National Congress), the party of Nelson Mandela and the party that has been in power since the elections of 1994.

I am no expert in South African politics, and as a guest in this country will voice no political opinion. What I will say is that the right to vote is the most extraordinary of rights that we as humans have created and recognized. The right for your voice to be heard is a part of human dignity that should never be denied. And the ability of a government to recognize and hear the voices of its citizens is the essence of a stable and high-functioning government.

It is my hope for South Africa that the voices of the disenfranchised, the poor, the suffering, the abused and the sick will be heard. And not only that they will be heard, but that they will be listened to and responded to. It is my hope that South Africa will continue to press on towards healing and a future for all of its citizens.

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
        for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted
        because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
                                           Matthew 5:3-10

A New Name and a New Home

On Thursday of this week, I went to meet with the village chief or kgosi in Setswana. Kgosi literally translates to king. It was a very different experience from meeting the chief in our training village and meeting the Ndebele Prince--more informal and personal.

Myself and two of my co-workers arrived at the tribal office around 10am Thursday morning and waited our turn to present ourselves to the chief and the village elders. When our turn came, we offered the formal greetings and Maureen, my supervisor, introduced me as the new Peace Corps volunteer. The chief himself was already well-informed of my presence in the village since Peace Corps had worked directly with him to build the site.

The chief is a much younger man than the village dignitaries I had previously met. Best guess is that he is in his mid to late forties. He became chief a few years ago when his father passed away. Most often the office of chief is passed from father to eldest son. Occasionally it will pass to the chief's eldest brother or nephew if the chief himself has no son. On rare occasions when the chief has no son, brother or nephew, the village elders will debate and select a new chief from amongst themselves. As of yet, I have not come across any cases in which the title has passed to a woman.

It is customary when meeting a chief to offer a gift. I brought the South Africa PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) calendar Peace Corps gave us when we arrived. It was free for me and is a small representation of what we as CHOP (Community HIV/AIDS Outreach Program) volunteers are here to assist with.

Before leaving the meeting the chief's spokesman expressed that the chief would like to give me a new Setswana name, Mmakau (Ma-k-ow-oo). The best English translation for the word is "mother of cow," but there is not really an English translation that expresses the meaning of the word. The name itself has a long history in this area--a history that I'm still researching. But because of the importance of the name to the village, it is a great honor to be given the name.

With the chief's blessing and good wishes, I have officially become a member of the community. I will now be able to come to the chief with any needs or grievances, and I fully believe that he will be a partner and an asset in my work with the community.

I consistently feel the welcoming embrace of my new home and couldn't be happier here. I look forward to building more relationships with the people here and being a part of their lives.

Taxis and Shopping Towns

Every other week the five of us in our cluster travel to Bella Bella
(Warmbad) to shop for groceries and whatever else we might need. In my
village, we have a few small stores that sell the essentials--bread,
milk, etc. There are also a few fruit stands that sell your basic fruits
and vegetables like apples, bananas, onions and potatoes. But for a
wider selection and a cheaper selection it is better to go into town.

Bella Bella was the closest shopping town to us during training and is
thus the town we are most familiar with. However, I am near several
shopping towns at my new site and am planning to work my way around to
each before picking my favorite.

Getting to Bella Bella is always an adventure. For me the trip requires
two taxis. When you hear the word "taxi", drop all of your preconceived
notions of what a taxi is and isn't. In South Africa taxis are the
equivalent to a 15 passenger van--taxis for hire are only available in
the cities. Most taxis are in various states of repair. I've been in
taxis with leaky roofs and doors, taxis with holes in the floor, and
taxis that you could swear were held together by duct tape and a prayer
(except that duct tape is not available in SA and the alternative is not
nearly as strong or versatile). I've also ridden in new taxis that are
very nice and comfortable, but those taxis are harder to come by.

When you take a local taxi in town or the villages nearby, chances are
the taxi will not be full for the entire journey and you will have the
luxury of elbow room. This is usually the case with my first taxi to the
village where my closest volunteer lives. I typically meet her at the
taxi rank there. My village does not have a taxi rank so catching a taxi
means you flag it down as it passes.

Once at the taxi rank we must wait for a full to nearly full taxi before
we begin the 45 minute trek to Bella Bella. Long distance taxis will not
leave without a full taxi in order to make the most profit per day. This
can mean waiting for over an hour or more for the taxi to leave. If the
taxi is not full or if people on the taxi want to get off before the
intended destination, the driver will take the back road to Bella Bella.
This means that we forgo the highway in the hopes of picking up more
passengers along the way. This also means a dirt road for half of the
journey. As the taxis become full of people and packages, they become
hot and cramped very quickly. And as we have often found, fifteen
passengers is more a suggestion than a guideline. I've been on a couple
of taxis now with more than twenty passengers. And the driver, well,
let's just say I think a few of them should have their licenses revoked.

Bella Bella itself is a resort town with a large resort and game
preserve. It was originally an Afrikaner town and has a high Afrikaner
population. The towns original name is Warmbad so named for the natural
warm baths there. Three grocery stores and several smaller shops make up
the main streets.

When we go, we make a day of it--shopping for non-perishables when we
first arrive, breaking for lunch, and shopping for the perishables after
lunch. The key to shopping is to make sure that you don't buy more than
you can carry or more than will fit on a taxi with fourteen other
passengers. Planning ahead is key.

It is also important to head to the taxi rank by at least 3PM. You may
be waiting a long time for a taxi and you don't want to arrive home
after dark since you have to walk from the road to your house--a ten
minute walk for me. The nice part about coming back to the village is
that it is only one taxi ride for me. It is not necessary to go back to
the taxi rank in my friend's village as I can get dropped off in my
village when we pass through.

It is a full day that can be very long and very tiring, but it is always
good to meet up with the other volunteers, enjoy a nice lunch, and buy
things like oatmeal and peanut butter. (Not sure if I would have
survived this long without peanut butter. It is a staple of Peace Corps
life.)

The key to shopping days--patience. It is the key to a lot of things
here. Patience. Practice patience always.

Palm Sunday at the African Catholic Church

My new host family attends the African Catholic Church. I’ll be honest that on coming to South Africa I had no idea that there was an African wing of the Catholic Church. I assumed that all Catholic churches in South African were Roman Catholic. There is a Roman Catholic Church in our community, but as of yet I have not met anyone who attends services there.

I had the opportunity to join my host family for the service on Palm Sunday—a four hour service that was much too much for my American sensibilities of time. The entire service was in Setswana including the Book of Common Prayer. Although I am growing more familiar with the language, I found that I didn’t understand majority of the service as the phrases “I ask for”, “I want to buy”, “I come from” and “I am a volunteer with the Peace Corps” were not used. I did pick up on “Modimo” (God), “Godimo” (sky/heaven), “Morena” (Christ) and “Jesu” (Jesus)

Despite the language barrier, I found that there was much that was similar to experiences I have had in Catholic churches before and also found elements of a few other familiar denominations sprinkled in here or there. I knew many of the hymns, some prayers were familiar, and the knowledge of the Spirit’s presence was a constant.

It is the tradition of the African Catholic Church to wear black and white. The women must wear a skirt and cover their heads while the men must wear a jacket. Unfortunately I did not bring a black or white skirt with me and all of my head scarves are multicolored. So I looked slightly out of place with my black and cream flowered skirt and my red and black checked head scarf—not only was I not in black and white but my wardrobe obviously did not match either.

My host-brother is an altar boy and my host-mother sings in the choir so our family went early for the Palm Sunday procession from the priest’s home to the church. After a prayer, the altar boys led the way with the crucifix and the incense leading the way followed by the priests and the rest of the assembly. My host-mother lent me a prayer book and I managed to fumble my way through the hymns while trying not to take a tumble as we traversed the dirt roads to the church.

Here I was left to my self for moments as my host-brother continued on to the altar and my host-mother made her way to the choir loft (not really a loft but a set of chairs set apart from the rest of the assembly). My host-mother’s older sister took charge of me and led me to sit with her. I soon discovered that I was sitting with the gogos (Setswana for grandmother). Next to our section were the older mothers (40s and 50s). In the section next to the mothers were the young women. And the men sat in the section farthest from us. If anyone hadn’t noticed yet that there was a white American oddly dressed in the assembly, they noticed now.

The sanctuary itself was a large room with the altar one step above the main floor. In the wall just behind the altar the builder had omitted bricks to form a cross (the most beautiful part of the sanctuary to me). Before the altar, wooden folding chairs divided the room into the four sections (gogos, older mothers, young women and men). There was also a section up at the front for the children and the previously mentioned separate section for the choir (entirely made up of women). The seats only filled half of the room. The back half was empty. I was told that on Good Friday they had to rent extra chairs because so many people attended the service. The roof of the sanctuary was made of corrugated tin, as most roofs in this part of the country are.

A few highlights from the service itself:

The signing was amazing. All acapella. Every man woman and child singing with full voice, abandoning themselves to the song. Whether they could carry a tune or not, they gave it their full heart. It was a beautiful sound that carried surprisingly well in the dismal acoustics of the place. Village life is full of song. You can almost always hear singing off in the distance from a church service, a funeral, a wedding, someone’s stereo—always music. Many of the people I know in my daily life often unconsciously drift into song as they work. It is as if there is a natural rhythm to the place that undulates just beneath the surface.

The church broke bread together in Holy Communion administered by the priest. I was prepared not to participate since I am not confirmed in the Catholic Church. But my host-mother and others insisted that I take part since I am a Christian. There was a five rand fee to participate in communion—with current exchange rates, that’s about 50 cents. I was initially surprised by the fee but soon realized that the money would cover the expense of the communion preparations. I went forward, paid the fee, received the priest’s blessing and received the body and blood of Christ. (The body a typical wafer used at most Catholic churches and the blood a very cheap wine that tasted like rubbing alcohol mixed with a few grapes.)

Towards the end of the service, my host-mother was asked to introduce me to the congregation. This meant that I had to go forward and greet everyone in Setswana. I managed a few sentences of greeting and thanks and received the approval of the congregation. Although slightly embarrassed, I was glad to be introduced. That’s fifty more people in the community who know me and are aware of my presence. Each meeting goes a long way towards integrating me into the community. A daily process for the coming two years.

There are many different churches in the village, and I plan to visit as many as I can. I want to get a broad understanding of what fellowship looks like here. Church and religion are very important to village life. I hope that I will gain a deeper understanding of its importance within this new culture and find ways to adopt it into my life here.

My New Home

One week ago today, we swore in 25 new Peace Corps Volunteers in South Africa. It was a simple ceremony for such a momentous occasion in all of our lives. However, looking back on it, a simple ceremony seems most appropriate to celebrate an entrance into a time of service and simple living.

Following the ceremony and lunch, we split ways to go to our permanent sites. I am in a village just south of our training village and about 45 minutes to an hour north of Pretoria. I am working with the district Victim Empowerment Program (VEP). (More about my service organization here.) My new homestay is wonderful. I have a cozy, two-room house. The bedroom is 12’x12’ and the front room is 12’x9’. The front room is where I do all of my cooking, and for now, I hangout in the bedroom as it’s the larger of the two rooms. I have electricity but no running water. My host-mother recently had an electric pump put in for the underground well and is working on getting a JOJO installed. A JOJO is a huge barrel that stores water. Once we have it up and running, the water that comes through the pump should be a lot cleaner. The water is safe for drinking but sandy. I’m very grateful for the Brita filter that Peace Corps gave us.

I’ve down-graded in pit latrine quality, but overall it’s not as bad as it could be. The pit latrine is about 100 meters away from my house, so no holding it in. When you got to go, you better go. The walls are entirely made of corrugated tin (as are my roof and most other roofs in this area), and I’m just a little too tall to be able to stand up completely in it. I had become rather used to the government built latrines in our training village. The pits were deeper which meant for less smell and less bugs. Yet in comparison, I know I have still got it pretty good.

My host-mother, Mma Kgafela, is a Setswana and Life Orientation (LO) teacher at the local middle school. She is intent upon helping me learn Setswana which I am very appreciative of. Life Orientation is a cross between health and life skills. I have to say that she is a truly unique and amazing woman. I have enjoyed our conversations very much. She is intent upon introducing me to the community and the community to me. Sunday she took me to the African Catholic Church that she attends and introduced me as her guest there. My experience there is another posting to come later on.

I thoroughly enjoy my host-brother Paposi. Papi is actually the son of Mma Kgafela’s younger sister who died when Papi was eight; he is now twenty. Papi is studying plumbing at a trade school in Pretoria, but also has plans for entering the priesthood. He has been an altar boy at the church for the past five years. He loves gospel music and loves to laugh. I imagine that I will have many stories to tell about Papi over the next few years. I feel very blessed to be in this new homestay. I have lived in so many places over the past several years that my definition of “home” has been stretched many times over. I think home is a state of acceptance and belonging. It is a place of comfort and of safety. And I think that right now I can easily say that this—this is home.

The Zionist Afrikaner

Today, I went with my host-mother Elise to Hammenskraal to by supplies for the spaza shop she runs from her home. Elise has a 1980 something (maybe early ‘90s) Nissan “buggy” (in SA pick-up trucks are typically referred to as vans, buggies or bakis, never trucks). The passenger seatbelt was broken and the dash meters did not work. No defrost to deal with the early morning mist. And Elise’s friend riding in the bed of the truck.

We thankfully made it to Hammenskraal in one piece. Our first stop was the chicken market—a tiny cement building located behind a petrol (gas) station and slightly hidden from the main street. Our aim was to buy chicken feet, livers and heads. Despite the already ridiculous scene of the vegetarian surrounded by five liter bags full of chicken heads and buckets of chicken feet, the whole scene officially became ridiculously awkward when the only other white person—a six-foot something Afrikaner—came over to speak to me.

Previous to this moment, I had been doing my best to have conversation in broken Setswana and English while Elise waited in the queue. I found myself as the novelty of the chicken market—the white American woman speaking Setswana. (This was not the first time nor do I imagine will it be the last time that I find myself such a novelty.) The Afrikaner—he never told me his name—came up and began speaking Afrikaans to me just as Elise returned from the queue. I was taken aback as I had not noticed him until then. I told him that I did not speak Afrikaans, and upon hearing my accent he asked where I was from. I told him I was from the US and gave him the brief overview of Peace Corps. (We are now all fairly good at rattling this off in both English and our target language.) Elise was obviously uncomfortable (as was I) with the Afrikaners’ presence and remembered that she forgot to order the livers. She went back to the queue and I was left with the Afrikaner.

Awkward conversation continued in which I learned that he was a member of the Zionist Church—a predominately black church in SA that has mixed cultural, ancestral practices with Christianity. (From what I have gathered, the Zionist Church is one of the largest denominations in SA.) According to my new Afrikaner friend being a Zionist meant that everything was okay between him and the black people of SA. However, watching his interaction with others in the tiny market said that this was clearly not the case. His attempt at joking banter in Afrikaans with others in the market was obviously not well received.

Finally he returned to his lorry (delivery truck)—which the point when I came to understand why he was in the market in the first place—but before we could leave, he returned. Apparently he had been on the phone with his boss—also a Zionist—and had been working some sort of deal for Elise to get a discount on chicken, um, products if she left her phone number so that I could be contacted later on. My new friend wanted to take me in his lorry to I’m not really sure where to meet the head of the Zionist Church.

Elise and I decided it was best to leave without leaving a phone number for the unnamed Afrikaner. I didn’t think Peace Corps would appreciate me road-tripping in the lorry of an unnamed man. I didn’t like the idea very much either.

At this point in our stay in South Africa, we have had very little interaction with Afrikaners. This was only the third Afrikaner that I have had any sort of extended conversation with. However we are often spoken to in Afrikaans by black South Africans who assume that we are Afrikaners. During these times, I struggle with a deep desire not to be associated with the Afrikaaners. I want it known that I am an American and was not part of what happened here. The sins of Apartheid are not my sins.

It is difficult not to sit in judgment upon the Afrikaners and the South African English who allowed racism and prejudice to drive a huge chasm through the heart of this country—a rift that has not healed and will likely not heal for many generations. It is difficult to find any sort of love for them when I see the great poverty that still exists in the rural areas largely due to Apartheid. It is difficult to not say “them” and “those people,” remembering that my forefathers also set up awful systems of trade and politics that counted other people as less than human and certainly less than white. It is hard to come from a place where a nation gathered the courage to elect a black man as president. It is hard knowing that for much of my generation the color of that man’s skin had nothing to do with why we did or did not vote for him. It is hard not to think of myself as the better person, and it is hard to be a vessel of peace.

I believe this is an issue that I will struggle with through the length of my service in SA. But it is important that I find my place within all of the “tribes” of South Africa—white and black—because healing the rifts of racism is part of our culture that desperately needs to be shared with SA. As many paces as we in the States have still to take to fully heal the rifts, SA has that many more. I come to believe more each day that I am here to be a vessel of peace and healing, though I have no idea what that ends up looking like at the end of the day. I am hopeful that God will clearly define that role as I seek His direction for my service here. It is much more than stepping out on principle; it’s stepping out of faith.

Site Visit

This last week we went on site visits to meet with the organizations we will serve over the course of the next two years. We also had the opportunities to meet with our home-stay families and see the housing that is being prepared for our arrival at the first of April.

The five days of site visit were some of the hardest I have had since my arrival in South Africa.

Let me first say that my organization is great. I am working with a victim support center that specializes in working with domestic violence and rape victims—two huge issues in South Africa. Most domestic violence here goes unreported as women often are not aware of their rights or are afraid of stepping outside the bounds of culture and tradition. And in South Africa the incidence of rape is the highest in the world. (I should note here that the incidence of rape amongst Peace Corps volunteers in South Africa is very low.)

The support center is staffed by some amazingly strong and fiery women who are very passionate about preventing abuse and helping to protect victims in our community. Almost all are volunteers who receive a small monthly stipend. A large percentage of NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) in SA do not have the funds to pay staff and rely heavily on government stipends. This creates a lot instability and turnover for many organizations, but finding reliable funding and donors outside of government grants can be very difficult here.

The center is currently in the process of completing a shelter that will be used as temporary housing and a safe house for victims of abuse. The shelter was intended to be completed in January, however, life can move a lot slower here and deadlines and contracts can become very flexible. I know my co-workers are very frustrated that the shelter is not yet complete, but they have little ability to speed the process.

On my visit I heard rumblings that once the shelter is complete the Department of Social Services plans to take over the center making it a government run organization. This is a great plan for the center as it will steady their funding stream, apply needed structure to the organization and provide steady pay for the staff. However, I am slightly concerned about what my position will be with the organization at that point. I feel that my role with the organization as it stands is to assist in developing the organizational structure and policy and to assist in building a reliable network between organizations in the community that work to assist victims of violence. However, when Social Services steps in, they will fill that role, leaving me and my skill set not being fully utilized for the rest of my Peace Corps service. I’ve expressed this concern to Peace Corps, and they seem willing to work with me, the support center, and my community to make sure that everyone is getting the most out of my placement.

My current home-stay is an entirely other matter. Actually I do not have a home-stay as Peace Corps is in the process of finding me a new home. To make a long story short, the home originally found for me was very shady. Peace Corps SA requires that PCVs stay in stand-alone houses separate from the host-family home. During site visit, I found that my house was not yet ready for me, and I was offered my host-parents’ room to stay-in for the few days of my visit. Soon after I arrived, I discovered that my host-father (mid-thirties) spoke little English and was drunk—a condition that persisted for most of my visit. I also discovered that my host-mother (also in her thirties) runs a “spaza” shop out of her home and rents the empty rooms in the main house. Unlike the “tuck shop” on the property where I have been staying during training, the spaza shop seems to serve a lot of seedy characters.

There are many stories to tell about my no-longer host-family. Fights between my host-mother and father (not actually married to each other). My drunken host-father accosting me about teaching him English. His drunken friends hanging out around the house. My host-mother demanding a ridiculously huge amount for electricity every month (electricity in SA is very cheap due to government subsidies). And to top it off, finding out upon my return that my host-mother lied to Peace Corps saying that she was the only person living on the property and hiding the spaza. It became clear after the last bit of information that my host-mother is an opportunistic woman and planned to make financial gains from having an American living with her.

Peace Corps will be working over the coming week to find me a new living arrangement. In the mean time, we move ever closer to swearing-in on April 2^nd. I am looking forward to officially being a Peace Corps Volunteer and leaving the hectic schedule of training behind. By that time I should also have more frequent internet access and be able to post blogs as I write them. But until then...

Insects, Roosters and Donkeys

Beetles, spiders, grasshoppers and unfortunately cockroaches come in all shapes and sizes here. I’ve seen grasshoppers the length of my hand, beetles the size of my big toe and spiders almost as flat as a sheet of paper. And I am fascinated by all of them. The extra big cockroaches and I do not live in peace. But luckily there is a can of Doom (the Raid of SA) in each and every room. Unfortunately this means the kitchen too. Often Doom is stored in cupboards right next to the food. One of my peers was so unfortunate as to sit down to her morning bowl of oatmeal and find that it was laced with bug spray.

We’ve seen a vast number of interesting new bug bites and rashes. Mosquitoes have been a constant pest and have proved to be my greatest annoyance out of the insect kingdom. We are not in a malaria area, however, so thankfully mosquito bites cause no more annoyance than they would in the states. This also means that I don’t have to take malaria medication major side effects of which are nightmares or intensely real dreams and increased sensitivity to the sun.

I will say that I am fortunate to be in a house that is kept very clean and in which we close up the house early in the evening so we don’t receive unwanted visitors. (This also means that it takes the house a long time to cool off on hot days.) Others have not been so fortunate. Another one of my peers stays in a house with insulation—a nice exchange to the heat from the tin roofs, but with consequences of its own. The insulation is exposed allowing for all sorts of insects to roam about it freely and thus fall below especially at night when the lights go out. My peer spent the first three weeks of home-stay being eaten alive at night—problem finally solved when we received our bed nets.

Life in our village also means farm animals and lots of them. There is the chorus of roosters that crow at midnight and then again at three and then again at five and then periodically throughout the day. There are the hens with their chicks that run freely from yard to yard, but are smart enough to know who to come home to when they are hungry. There are the dogs who are the family pets, and then there are the dogs that are the family scourges. Our dog is a “notty” dog because he attacks the chickens. This means he stay chained to one of the trees in the backyard and is generally treated very poorly.

My favorites of the farm animals are the cows and the donkeys. Cows here are a sign of wealth. Every morning one of the herders drives a group of about ten cattle (including calves) up the road past our house, and every evening he drives them pack. I especially enjoy this herd because of their cow bells. I enjoy the clank-clank as they pass by. But cows do not just roam the dirt road by my house, they can also be found on the main roads connecting the villages. We frequently have to slow to a stop because of cattle in the road. Amusingly there are many “cattle crossing” signs about, but I have not once seen cattle cross at the crossing. They tend to cross everywhere but there.

On stressful/bad days, the donkeys can make everything better. I truly think they are the silliest animals on earth. They don’t actually do much but graze, stand, and roll around in the sand, but all those actions just seem comical. They’re cute but ugly all at the same time, and really their rolls in the sands are quite hysterical to watch. I think in personality our donkeys are somewhere between Eeyore and Donkey from Shrek, but they bring me joy just the same.

I can’t wait to have enough bandwidth to post pictures of all these creatures for you to see. There not quite the fauna I was expecting to find in Africa, but I enjoy them all the same.

Meeting the Ndebele King

Well, we didn’t actually meet the king, but we met his son the prince and the rest of the royal family. The king had to leave for a meeting before we arrived. This has been a common theme in our training as many things don’t exactly happen the way they were planned and we learn to live in flex time. In very general terms, time flexes and flows a little more here than it generally does in the U.S.

The Ndebele people are one of the many tribes in South Africa. Generally they are thought of as being artisans demonstrated to us by the rich beauty of their beadwork and their beautifully painted houses. The Ndebele originally lived in an area north of Pretoria, but were moved from their ancestral grounds during Apartheid. Much like the move of Native Americans to the reservations, tribes were moved to villages and townships outside of the areas where whites wanted to settle.

There are many traditional formalities observed when meeting a chief or a king. For women it means wearing a dress or a skirt and covering your head and possibly shoulders depending on the tradition of the specific tribe. The day we went it was ridiculously hot, but despite the oppressive heat, many of the Ndebele women wore thick flannel blankets displaying the Ndebele colors around their shoulders. The women and the men sat separately during the meeting. For our group is was the first time that we had seen the subservient female tradition prevalent in most South African tribal cultures so obviously displayed. Many of us had caught queues from various interactions, but it was the first time that it had been so prominent before us. At the end of the meeting the men sang and danced together, and then the women sang and danced together. During the meal that followed, the men and the women mingled, but the hierarchy was imprinted in our mind. It became a major topic during our question and answer session with the prince and a few of the elders.

For most of us growing up in a post-women’s lib America, the cultural inequality between the sexes is a source of much discomfort both for the women and the men in our group. Among the women, several of us are struggling to find our footing and to find the balance of sharing our belief in gender inequality while showing a respect for the culture. The amount of subservience varies from tribe to tribe, village to village, etc. This can at times make it even more of a struggle to find the balance of how to be culturally appropriate in the village we live in but then travel to another village and be culturally appropriate in that setting. For women this also means more unwanted attention.

Despite the aforementioned, there is much beauty in the Ndebele culture. So many traditions with so much meaning and purpose. The prince was incredibly welcoming and gracious to us. We are always welcomed with so much love and openness, and we are honored over and over again by community after community and group after group. The spirit of “Ubuntu” which literally translates to “I am because you are” is pervasive wherever we go. And it is a sentiment that echoes throughout the cultural traditions and every community we have come in contact with.

Dumelang (Hello) from South Africa

Rebaona (Reb-ah-ō-nah). In Setswana it means “we all belong to God.” Rebaona is my Setswana name given to me by my language teacher Botsang (Bōt-sahng). It is also the name of Botsang’s daughter.

As I think of all the many things that I could share, I think first of this, we all belong to God. Over and over as I have met new people, seen new places, tasted new foods, and experienced a new kind of simple life—this has been impressed upon me. We all belong to God.

As of the writing of this post, I have been in South Africa for about 2 ½ weeks. (Since we have limited internet access, I am writing posts in Word and plan to post them on Blogger when I have the opportunity.) I am staying with a woman name Motsogo (Mōt-sō-hō) and her two great-grandchildren Jerry, age 3, and Shantile, age 4. Motsoho owns a “tuck shop” which is on the same property as our house, and her daughter Shirley lives in the room attached to the shop. A tuck shop is similar to an American convenience store, but ours is a very small shop compared with others in the area. Of the 25 people in our training group, most are staying in the same village as I am where Setswana (the language I am learning) and Sepedi are the primary languages. The rest of the group is in a nearby village where more people speak Zulu and Swati, the languages that portion of the group are learning. In total, South Africa has eleven recognized national languages. Our training group meets almost daily for training sessions at the college of education in a village between the two home-stay villages.

My mma (mother), Motsogo, is a very kind and very gentle woman. She shows me in many little ways how glad she is to share her home with me. When we arrive home from training in the evenings, she frequently asks me to get out my notebook so she can see what Setswana we learned. We sit on the porch as the sun sets, and she helps me to study. Her frequent “alright, darling” is encouraging and endearing.

Jerry and Shantel are cousins. Shantel’s mother (Shirley’s daughter) is going to school in Pretoria, about a three hour drive from our village), and Jerry’s parents take care of the family’s other tuck shop in Jo’burg. They are both friendly and sweet children. They’ve already won my heart. I have been teaching them “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider”, and they in turn teach me Setswana songs.

Our home is fixed up with plenty of modern conveniences such as electricity and television, but I still have plenty of opportunity to enjoy the nuances of bucket-bathing and the pit toilet. Neither is actually that bad. I truthfully enjoy bucket-bathing as it cools you off more than anything else. We are still in the summer months here, and tin roofs make for very hot houses which make hot days even hotter. I am slowly adjusting to the heat, however. Hand-washing the laundry is not that bad once you find the rhythm of the chore. I find I usually walk away with a sense of accomplishment. (We will see if I still feel that way after a few more months of it.)

Food is a whole new adjustment. The two main staple foods in my new home are pap and meat (bogobe le nama). Pap is similar to grits, but add about four more cups of cornmeal and take away all seasoning. It’s very thick and heavy. Meat is mostly chicken or beef—chicken is usually boiled and served with the skin and beef is most often stewed in our home with big chunks of fat. My favorite new food that I have come across is called merogo which literally means vegetable, but commonly refers to a kind of African spinach. It looks much more like grass than what Americans would commonly think of as spinach. My mma served it stewed with tomatoes and onions. It was amazing.

It hardly seems that it has only been two and a half weeks. Staging in Philadelphia and leaving my family in Lubbock seem so much farther away in my memory than that. I will write more in depth on the many experiences and discovery’s I am making later, but I’ll leave this post as an overview. Many blessings to you.

The Rising of the Sun

Hello from Peace Corps Staging in Philadelphia.

Today was a day of morning site-seeing and afternoon ice-breakers, orientation and scheduling. It all seems such a jumble of pictures and information that I hardly know how to share it with you.

We are a group of 25 diverse and yet similar people mostly in the age range of 20-30 with one in the over 50 crowd. Over the afternoon and early evening, we turned in forms and filled out more forms. We talked about why we wanted to join the Peace Corps and PC history. We talked about our anxieties and our aspirations. We brainstormed risk management and prevention. We received detailed schedules for the next day.

Tomorrow begins at 7:30am when we walk to the clinic for a yellow fever vaccination and the first dosage of malaria medication. After, we return to the hotel, load all of our bags onto buses and drive to JFK in NYC. We leave from JFK around 5:00PM EST and arrive in Johannesburg around 5:00PM South African time on the 4th. We'll then board another bus to take us to the dormitory just north of Pretoria where we will spend the first week.

As I walked through Independence Hall this morning and viewed the Liberty Bell, it struck me how incredibly appropriate that our staging event was held here. This is a place of beginnings. This morning, the tour guide at Independence Hall told a story about the speaker's chair. On the headrest of the chair is a carved sun that sits on a horizon. Benjamin Franklin would comment that he never knew whether the sun was setting or rising. Then on the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, Franklin said that he had finally figured it out--the sun was rising.

It's an appropriate sentiment. The sun is rising on a new day for all of us here.

A Letter to You from the Peace Corps

The following letter is from the Peace Corp for friends and families of Peace Corp Volunteers. If you would like the complete address or any of the phone numbers I have removed below, please Facebook me or email me. Many thanks for all the well wishes and prayers!

January 2009

Dear Families and Friends,

Greetings from the South Africa Desk at the U.S. Peace Corps in Washington, D.C.! It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to the Peace Corps circle of friendship. We receive many questions from family members and friends of Volunteers about life in South Africa, so we would like to offer you advice and assistance in advance. 

1. Irregular Communication. (Please see #3 for the mailing address to Peace Corps' office in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa) Mail from the United States to Pretoria is fairly reliable; however, mail service within South Africa is not as efficient and reliable. There is enormous variation in the time it takes for mail and packages to arrive at Volunteers’ sites. Generally, Volunteers find that they receive mail and packages from the United States two to four weeks after it has been sent. The same is true for sending mail from South Africa. Of course, there are exceptional cases in which a letter or a package might arrive within a shorter period or be substantially delayed. Some mail simply may not arrive. The destination of mail for Volunteers is as varied as the length of time it takes for mail to arrive. 

We suggest that in your first letters you ask the Volunteer to give an estimate of how long it takes for him/her to receive your letters, and then try to establish a predictable pattern of how often you will write to each other. Also, try numbering your letters so that the Volunteer knows if he/she has missed one. 

Being a Peace Corps Volunteer is a rewarding experience; however, there will also be times when Volunteers may write home telling of their "war" stories. Letters might describe recent illnesses, frustration with work, isolation, lack of resources, etc. While the subject matter may be good reading material, it can often be misinterpreted on the home front. Volunteers have a wonderful support network in-country that includes counterparts and community members at their site, other Peace Corps Volunteers, as well as Peace Corps/South Africa staff. The Peace Corps’ highest priority is maintaining the health and safety of every Volunteer. Peace Corps/South Africa maintains a medical unit in Pretoria with two full-time medical officers, who care for the Volunteers’ primary health care needs. If the Volunteer requires medical care that is not available in South Africa, he/she will be medically evacuated to the United States. Fortunately, these are rare circumstances. 

If for some reason your communication pattern is broken and you do not hear from your family member, you may want to contact the South Africa Desk or the Office of Special Services (OSS) at Peace Corps Washington at 1-800-***-****, extension ****. Also, in the case of an emergency at home (death in the family, sudden critical illness, etc.), please do not hesitate to call OSS immediately, so that a message can be sent to the Volunteer. Use the above number during regular business hours (9:00 am to 5:00 pm Eastern Time, Monday through Friday). After hours, or during weekends, the Peace Corps Duty Officer may be reached at (***) ***-****and you will be transferred to an answering service. Tell the operator your name, telephone number, and the nature of the emergency and the Peace Corps Duty Officer will call you back.

2. Telephone Calls. The telephone system in South Africa is relatively good and service in and out of Pretoria to the United States is mostly reliable. In the interior of the country, where most of the Volunteers are located, phones are fewer in number and of decreased reliability. Volunteers do not have residential phones; however, many Volunteers choose to buy cell phones or use public phones to make and receive international calls. They will be able to inform you of the actual telephone numbers and the reliability of telephone service once they arrive at their permanent sites in the country.

The South Africa Desk maintains regular contact with the Peace Corps office in Pretoria through phone calls and e-mail. However, these communication lines are reserved for business only and cannot be used to relay personal messages. All communication between family members and the Volunteer should be done via international mail, personal phone calls, or e-mail. Many Volunteers are able to access e-mail at Internet cafes in larger cities and towns on a weekly or monthly basis, depending on their location. 

3. Sending packages. Parents and Volunteers like to send and receive care packages through the mail. Unfortunately, sending packages can be a frustrating experience for all involved due to occasional thefts and heavy customs taxes. You may want to try to send inexpensive items through the mail, but there is no guarantee that these items will arrive. Even though many Volunteers choose to get local post office boxes, you may also use the following address to send letters and/or packages:                                                                                                                                            

Name of Volunteer, PCV

U. S. Peace Corps

PO Box ****

****

Pretoria

SOUTH AFRICA

It is recommended that packages be sent in padded envelopes or bubble envelopes if possible, as boxes tend to be taxed more frequently and might pose as a greater target for theft. For lightweight but important items (e.g. airline tickets), DHL (an express mail service) does operate in Pretoria. If you choose to send items through DHL, you must address the package to:

Country Director

c/o: U. S. Peace Corps

***********Street

********

Pretoria

SOUTH AFRICA

The phone number for the Peace Corps office in South Africa is (**) **-***-****, as DHL will need this information. If you send the item to the Country Director, no liability can be assumed. For more information about DHL, please call their toll free number, 1-800-CALL-DHL, or visit their web site at www.dhl.com. Other courier services may operate in Pretoria - DHL is only one possibility. 

We hope this information is helpful to you during the time your family member or friend is serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Africa. We understand how frustrating it is to communicate with your family member overseas and we appreciate your using this information as a guideline. Please feel free to contact us at the South Africa Desk in Washington, D.C. if you have any further questions. Our phone number is 1-800-***-****, ext. ****/*, or locally, ***-***-****/*.

Sincerely,

South Africa Desk Assistant

Peace in the Whirlwind

Life seems a crazy whirlwind of lists and forms and emotions right now. On February 1st, I board a plane for Philadelphia for Peace Corps staging--orientation and immunizations. I will also have about half a day for sightseeing which I'm looking forward to since I have never been to Philadelphia. Then on the 3rd my staging group will board a bus that will take us to JFK in New York where our flight to Johannesburg leaves at 5:20PM EST. We will arrive in South Africa at 5:45PM UTC on February 4th. Johannesburg is 7 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time (8 hours for the Central Time Zone, etc).

Currently there are several pages of lists--To-Do lists, packing lists, shopping lists, reading lists--that fill the notebook on my nightstand. At times it feels as though every time I cross something off a list, I find one or two things to add to it. The stack of forms to be completed seemed a mile high initially; though, I think I have finally worked through them all. And the emotions range from pure excitement, to pure shock, to pure "I must be crazy."

In the last weeks, I've had the blessing of spending Christmas with my family and New Year's with a dear friend from high school, attending the wedding of my college roommate, and visiting good friends from Portland days. It has been a good few weeks, and I will treasure all of these memories dearly.

Throughout pre-service training (8-10 weeks), I will have limited access to email and telephone. If you would like to keep correspondence with me through snail mail, please send me an email or message me on Facebook and I will send you my address.

Please pray that God will continue to be the author of this journey. Pray that I will embrace peace in the midst of the whirlwind. Pray that I will enter into this new adventure humbly, that my mind and my heart will be open and willing to learn. Pray that I will truly embrace what it means to live simply and love radically. Pray that my feet will be like those who bring the good news.

Blessings and peace upon you.

The Package on the Doorstep

It came in a FedEx box left on the doorstep sometime Friday.

After arriving home from a day of subbing, I first checked the mail. No sign of the highly anticipated package. My arms now loaded down with my bags and the hefty stack of mail, I began fishing for my keys and heading for the front door. Then I saw it. A thin, white, FedEx package just the right size for...

Juggling the array of personal possessions and junk mail, I bent to pick-up the box--could this be it? or just a Christmas present from some out of town relative? I flipped the box, nearly losing the stack of mail in the process. Peace Corps. The package was from the Peace Corps. This was it.

I don't remember entering the house. The next thing I remember is ripping open the package, several of the bags still in my hand. I sunk into a chair as a bright blue folder filled to the brim with reading materials and forms spilled out onto the table. The first item was a pamphlet with the words "Your Assignment" printed across the top of it. I skimmed through the first few lines:

Country: Republic of South Africa
Program: Community HIV/AIDS Outreach
Job Title: HIV Outreach Worker
Orientation Dates: February 2, 2009--February 3, 2009
Pre-Service Training (in South Africa): February 4, 2009--March 29, 2009
Dates of Service: March 29, 2009--March 29, 2011

Suddenly everything around me slowed. It was the bit in movies where some overarching truth sets in for the protagonist and everything around the character seems to stop. But there was also a quickening of the Spirit in me, yes...Yes.

After further reading:

I will live and work in the KwaZulu Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga or NorthWest Provinces. During Pre-Service Training, Peace Corps staff will match me with a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) based upon their knowledge of the organization and their knowledge of my skills and experience. Their is a possiblity of many roles that I will fill with that organization, but in whatever role I will likely be working with youth to educate and create HIV/AIDS awareness. I will not know whether I will be in a rural or urban area until training.

Throughout Pre-Service Training, I will be living with a host family, learning the culture, langauage and history of the region. I will especially be learning how I fit into a place that is still healing from Apartheid. I will also be learning how to build relationships and establish myself in a culture with a very different gender and age dynamic.

The next seven weeks will be precious time with my family, as well as, preparation for my departure. Please be praying for my family as we've all become comfortable with my being back in Lubbock. It has been a little over a year since I began the application process for the Peace Corps, and I think we all began to believe that this day might never come.

As I learn more about my assignment, I will share with you new information and prayer requests. I hope that you will all share in my joy. And thank you for the many, many prayers you have already offered. Peace and blessing.

The Birth of a Prince

"Some princes are born in palaces, some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope," reads the opening line of TIME's feature article last week on President-Elect Obama and his journey to the White House. Author Nancy Gibbs goes on, "We are the ones we've been waiting for, [Obama] liked to say, but people were waiting for him, waiting for someone to finish what a King began."

Recently I was reading through the feeding of the five thousand in John 6. As I read through a very familiar story, a miracle of loaves and fishes, I was struck by this great throng of men. They followed Jesus because they would make him king. They desired to forcefully take back the kingdom, the birthright of Israel. They believed in Jesus because they had seen signs and wonders. They had seen him heal the sick and feed the many. They craved something to hope in and saw it in Jesus.

But Jesus knew their hearts and knew that this was not the kind of kingdom that the Father had sent him to establish. The Kingdom Christ came to establish would triumphantly enter on the back of the donkey. It would be a conquest that began in a country stable, was claimed in bloodshed and was established through resurrection. The Kingdom Christ came to establish was not of the earthly realm because the earthly realm was simply too small to hold it.

Since first reading them, Nancy Gibb's words have grated on my heart. I have seen the throngs that have followed Obama and been one of their number. I believe him to be a good, intelligent and principled man, and I have great hope that he will be a wise leader for our country. But this prince "born out of imagination, out of scraps of history and hope"--this prince is a man. And to negate the miracle of the virgin birth by equating it with the rise in history of a new president, however capable he may turn out to be, is to cast our pearls before swine, is to bow our heads in worship to a false king.

We who count ourselves among the disciples of Christ must understand and boldly claim our allegiance. For our allegiance is not to a flag or a president. Our allegiance should not be held by the platforms of a specific political party. The gospel we preach is not one of democracy or capitalism. But our allegiance is to the Kingdom of God. Our allegiance is to the one Savior, the Prince of Peace and King of Kings, who offers us much more than scraps of hope. The gospel we preach is the gospel of Kingdom Come.

I believe whole-heartedly that we should offer President-Elect Obama both our support and our prayers. But I believe that our higher calling must be to offer more than scraps of hope to a nation that is so desperately in need of hope and to offer hope and healing to a world that is crying out for something more than the little that our politicians and world leaders have to offer. The crowds once came to Jesus looking for a kingdom even though they did not understand the Kingdom he came to offer. We who now understand that Kingdom, have been welcomed into it and have accepted our place in it, now have the opportunity to advance it in grace, peace, love and hope. My prayer is that we would cast off what hinders us and run with perseverance.

Electioneering

I've spent the past several weeks working for the Lubbock County Elections Office. A variety of odd jobs, but mostly working at the polls for both early voting and Election Day.  I had a great experience. Lubbock County is one of the best counties in the country to vote in and the best county to vote in for people with disabilities. Who knew? Lubbock County.

What I noted most as I assisted voters of all parties, races and backgrounds was the general good will I felt from almost everyone. No matter their candidate or party, there was an undeniable feeling of unity as citizens performed their civic duty. Parents coming in with their 18-year-olds, first-time voters who had just received their citizenship, other first-time voters who had never chosen to exercise their voting privelege, occasional voters, committed voters, voters in their 90s--everyone shared a common good will. And I couldn't help but think that maybe we as American citizens are not as divided as the national media often portrays us to be. And maybe we are not as divided as our Congress presents itself to be.

That gives me hope.

Fields of Poppies

In the Wizard of Oz, there is a scene where Dorothy and her traveling companions find themselves in what turns out to be an inebriating field of poppies. We the viewer/reader know that this mysterious field is a trap set by the Wicked Witch of the West, but to Dorothy it's a lovely place for a snooze. Yet Dorothy is on a quest. It's no time for a nap. The Tin Man and the Scarecrow, in their non-drug-induced state, recognize that the field is a distraction. It's distracting Dorothy from her true focus--to get home to Kansas.

But the thing about the field of poppies is that it is so alluring. You've already been on such a long journey, and you truly are very tired. It's beautiful. Why not take a little break? You deserve it, don't you?

Of late, I have found myself nestled deep in that field of poppies. The field was so alluring and dreamland so easy to slip into. But in the last few weeks dreams have become more fitful and restful sleep harder to come by. It has been over four weeks since I received my medical clearance from the Peace Corps. The first few weeks passed with excitement and anticipation, but with each passing day that excitement wanes and discouragement sets in. Not knowing when exactly I am leaving or where exactly I am going, it is hard to keep focused on why I am choosing to go. It is hard to focus on my desire to go, see, touch, learn from and hopefully help those living in extreme poverty. It is hard to focus on the commitment I've made to pursuing social justice. It is hard to have faith in the call that God has given.

Often I find my mind wandering to the jars of clay Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 4. Paul says that we are "perplexed but not in despair." Perplexed? Yes, I am perplexed. Sometimes I wonder if I am in despair. But I think that perplexed is a more apt description. Perplexed because I simply don't understand why I don't know the when and the where yet. Perplexed because the whole process has taken over a year now and is still not complete. Perplexed because the long spaces in between the forward movement are very long.

Yet the yellow brick road still wonders on ahead of me, and it is important to keep engaged with God and His Church. The field of poppies has its allurements, but it is the forward path of the brick road that leads to greater hope, truth and fulfillment.

World MDG Blog Day

As I thought about what I would post for World MDG Blog Day, I came up with many ideas about how to express both the progress we've made and the long way we have yet to go on the Millennium Development Goals--the eight goals agreed to by the United Nations member states designed to improve the quality of life for the developing world.

Then I ran across the following letter originally posted by Micah Challenge from leaders in the Global South to the church in the United States. You can download a copy here. And to find out what you can do to use your voice go to bread.org.

 _____________________________________

 August, 2008

TO THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES

As the Church of the Lord in what is known as the "Southern" part of the world, moved by the Holy Spirit to fight for the abundant life that Jesus Christ offers, we address our Christian family in the United States, a Church of the same covenant, faith and love. Grace and Peace to all of our brothers and sisters.

We know your works of love; these works have allowed millions of human beings for many generations in our countries in the South to receive the gospel, the Grace of Jesus Christ and the power of His Salvation. The U.S. church's untiring missionary effort planted in our lands Hope in Him who came to reconcile EVERYTHING.

Nevertheless, the political, social and economic situation in the places where this hope has been announced is increasingly distressing. Millions of people in the global South are dying of hunger, violence and injustice. These situations of poverty and pain are not simply the product of the internal functions of our countries; rather they are the results of the international policies of the governments that wield global power.

Therefore, we have this against you, brothers and sisters, that along with this powerful announcing of the Gospel, the Church from the United States has not also raised its voice in protest against the injustices that powerful governments and institutions are inflicting on the global South - injustices that afflict the lives and ecosystems of millions of people who, centuries after the proclamation of the Gospel, still have not seen the sweat of their brow turned into bread.

The worsening inequality and poverty in the South is alarming. Seven years since the United States and 191 other nations publicly promised to cut extreme global poverty in half by the year 2015 through the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), your country has made only a little progress towards fulfilling its commitments.

The MDGs should stir us to action because they echo the calls of the biblical prophets for justice and equity. Further, they are achievable and measurable markers on the roadmap to end extreme global poverty.

And so we ask you as sisters and brothers, citizens of the wealthiest most powerful nation on earth, to publicly challenge your candidates and political leaders - now and after the elections are over - to lead the world in the struggle to cut global poverty in half by 2015. If you who know the Truth will not speak for us who will?

The Church in the United States has the opportunity today to be faithful to the Hope that it preaches. We urge you to remember that the Hope to which you were called as a messenger demands that you seek first the Kingdom of God and God's justice.

Out of love for us, the global Church, in holiness, use your citizenship responsibly for the benefit of the entire world; it is for this very reason that the Lord poured out His life on the Cross.

All who have ears, let them hear what the Lord says to His Church.

Ndaba Mazabane
President
Association of Evangelicals in Southern Africa

Bishop Gerry Seale
General Secretary/CEO
Evangelical Association of the Caribbean

Dr. Richard Howell
General Secretary
Evangelical Fellowship of India

Rev Moss Ntlha
General Secretary
Evangelical Alliance of South Africa

C. Rene Padilla
President
Kairos (Peru)

Pastor Owen Isaacs
General Secretary
Evangelical Fellowship of Botswana

Bishop Efraim Tendero
President
Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches

Rev Heng Cheng
General Secretary/CEO
Evangelical Fellowship of Cambodia

Bishop Paul Mususu
Executive Director/CEO
Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia

Rev Bambang Semedi
General Secretary
Southern Part Sumatera Christian Church

Dr. Reynaldo R. Avante
National Coordinator
Micah Challenge Philippines

Bishop Mano Rumalshah
Bishop
Diocese of Peshawar (Pakistan)

Alfonso Weiland
Co-founder
Paz y Esperanza (Peru)

Erika Izquierdo
Paz y Esperanza (Peru)

Lawrence Tempfwe
National Facilitator
Micah Challenge Zambia

Rev Joe Simfukwe
Principal
Bible College of Central Africa

João Pedro Martins
National Coordinator
Micah Challenge Portugal

Rev Soleman Batti
Chairman
The Toraja Church (Indonesia)

Rev Untung S.K. Wijayaputra
President
The Toraja Mamasa Church (Indonesia)

d'Karlo Pyrba
Director
YABIMA Foundation (Indonesia)

Semuel Takajanji
Director
Kuda Putih Sejahtera Foundation (Indonesia)

Rev Iskandar Saher
Executive Director
Center for the Development of Holistic Ministry (Indonesia)

Gahungu Bunini*
General Secretary
Evangelical Alliance of Rwanda

*Signed on with the names of 16 pastors in the Evangelical Alliance of Rwanda

Bishop Mano Rumalshah
Bishop
Diocese of Peshawar (Pakistan)

Rev Michael Dasey
Rector
Gungahlin Anglican Church (Australia)

Rev Geoffrey Taylor
Director
SoulSupply (Australia)

Rev. Paul Craig
Senior Pastor
Diamond Valley Baptist Church (Australia)

Rev Greg Templeton
Pastor
Sydenham Baptist Church (Australia)

Morris Alex
Pastor
Souls Outreach Church

Captain Robert Casburn
Commanding Officer
The salvation Army Northern Waves Fellowship (Australia)

Oh, I See

John Fortune & John Bird on the South Bank show
by yom_

Nothing But Nets

Have $10? Want to spend it on something worthwhile? Check out Rick Reilly on Colbert.

Where's Walt When You Need Him?

Whatever happened to the animated movie?

Yesterday my sister and I took my nephew to see the latest installment of CG animated movies, Fly Me to the Moon. Its box office draw, 3D animation. I can't say that I went with great expectation, but I was hoping for mild entertainment and a few surprises in 3D. Disappointed on both counts.

With many animated movies over recent years, I consistently find myself leaving the theater or shutting off the DVD disappointed. Since the arrival of Toy Story, movie studios have been riding a wave of CG animation. Special effects in live action films are a cheap thrill that come a dime a dozen. And CG animated movies often have weak plots with varying degrees of quality animation. (Notable exceptions for many of the Pixar movies and a few from Dreamworks.)

But the thing I miss most is the magic of an animated movie. I distinctly remember the first time I saw Beauty and the Beast. It was a fantastical experience that made me go home and imagine for days that I was Belle. There is a magic associated with hand-drawn animation that is lost in the CG world. I miss the experience and the magic. And wonder whether it is really worth it for movie studios to sacrifice that magic and quality for the cheap, reproducible formula of today's animated movie. Somehow I don't think that this was the visioin of Walt Disney or his contemporaries.

Peace Corps Update

I have received my medical and dental qualification for the Peace Corps. I am now awaiting word from the Office of Placement about my assignment. I should here something soon and will let you know.

Taking Issue with the Issues

It's a debate that cannot be avoided--education, abortion, environmentalism, gay marriage, poverty, energy, taxation, war...and a host of others. These are the issues we bring to the table in the political debate. Hot-button words that have specific associations and specific opinions for each person. A candidate's stance on one or many of these issues will dictate how we vote. These issues will be what we campaign for with our representatives on the local, state and national levels. Some will spurn letter writing campaigns and phone calls to congress. Some will gain national note through the media. They are the issues of the day in American politics and society.

Yet, in the debate I am beginning to take issue with the word "issue." I'm wondering if as Christians we should allow ourselves to be narrowed into a particular set of issues. Aren't we called to be a more wholistic people than that?

For instance, the hot-button topic of abortion. A good portion of this country is either passionately for or against abortion. But as a believer, I find that pro-life has to mean a lot more than an anti-abortion stance. Pro-life has to mean that I care about the quality of life a person will have throughout their life not just whether or not they are born. It means that if I am a proponent for adoption that I care about the state of the foster care system. It means that I care that people receive adequate nutrition, have access to health care, and have access to quality education. It also means that I care about decreasing unwanted pregnancies in the first place. And it means that I care about the health of the women who will continue to have abortions illegally if abortion is criminalized.

The wholistic approach is the example that Christ gave us. The woman at the well or the woman caught in adultery. The infighting between the Sadducees and the Pharisees over resurrection. The questions over Caesar's taxes. Christ didn't narrow any of these down to a specific issue but rather opened up the debate to look beyond into a bigger picture--into a redeemed creation.

Neither political party in this country has a hold on the Christian agenda. And it's not because there are not issues out there that we as Christian's should care about, but because Christianity is bigger than an agenda. Being a disciple of Christ means radically following a man who taught the armies that followed him to lay down their swords in order to break bread with one another, breaking bread notibly through the power of a miracle of loaves and fishes. We are called not to create our own political agenda but to live counter-cultural lives that dispel political agenda. We are called to be good stewards of our citizenship not for the sake of our country but for the sake of our Kingdom. When we enter the political realm and express opinion on the issues, we must strive to be wholistic people looking into the hope of a redeemed creation.

The Girl Effect

In case you missed this blurb on your Google News feed, today is the 88th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment which gave women the right to vote in the United States.

The 88th anniversary is not a very auspicious anniversary; however, the notation reminded me of this video I saw a few months back on "The Girl Effect"--the powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate in their society.

To celebrate this anniversary, take a few minutes to watch the video below and think about the impact that women have had on our world, continue to have on it, and will have on it in the future.

Working Out of a Redeemed Imagination

While reading an article on the emerging movement for the elimination of nuclear-weapons in the latest issue of Relevant magazine, I was struck by the following statement:

"We live between two realities that we haven't seen: on the one side, the cross and resurrection; and on the other, the fulfillment of God's Kingdom...that is a redeemed creation. When Christians are faithful to this vision, there is a savor to our salt and a brightness to our light that the world needs badly."

We have heard of and believed in the cross and the resurrection. Now we wait for and hope for the redeemed creation. And it is this redeemed creation that I see when I dream of a world without extreme poverty, a world without hunger, a world without pollution.

Often, I encounter a kind of cynicism and pessimism that says these dreams cannot be achieved. Often, when I start listing off the statistics and tallying the odds, I encounter the same cynicism in myself. Poverty, hunger, global-warming--they seem to be immovable objects. Barriers that cannot be thrown aside no matter how large or how powerful the counterforce.

But when challenged with the idea of a redeemed creation, we can see a world without them because we can foresee the Kingdom of God. We stand in the midst of the good news brought near to us through Jesus Christ and the coming good news of the Kingdom of God and the splendor of the new creation. It is through these eyes that we see immovable objects moved--mountains thrown into the sea. And it is with these eyes that we act. Not to be ourselves savior of humanity and of creation, but instead to be living testimony of the redemptive vision of God.

In view of a redeemed creation, we need a new and redeemed imagination. A redemptive imagination that envisions creative solutions to the world's most pressing problems. A redemptive imagination that promotes freedom and effectively disbands the slave trade and sex-trafficking. A redemptive imagination that disarms and destroys conflicts between peoples and puts an end to genocide. A redemptive imagination that feeds every child and eradicates disease.

A redemptive imagination that knows no limits because it is fueled by a limitless God.

It is the redeemed imagination of Christ that can serve as our guide. Jesus took the tattered pieces of the Jewish nation, pieces of the Law that were meant to bring redemption, and rewove them through the limitless powers of His imagination into the redemptive power of the cross and the resurrection. That same imagination is now offered to us through the power of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. It is intertwined with faith, hope and love. A redeemed imagination that envisions a redeemed creation.

With a redeemed imagination at our fingertips, the redemptive power of the cross and the resurrection behind us, and a redeemed creation before us--we can offer to the world an unmatched savor to our salt and brightness to our light. Both of which are desperately needed.